Slow Quake Repairs Fuel Blight Fears

More than two years after the Northridge earthquake, nearly 400 quake-damaged buildings in Los Angeles remain vacant and unrepaired, demonstrating the lingering effects of the nation’s most expensive disaster.

In quiet residential neighborhoods and busy commercial strips, the buildings continue to deteriorate under the destructive forces of weather, vandals and vermin, creating eyesores and health hazards for neighbors.

But repairs and demolition of the vacant buildings may be slow because a federally funded demolition program ended in July, and a $321-million city loan program has run out of funds and is on hold pending federal approval of additional money.

Such delays worry neighbors and city officials, who fear that the buildings will continue to fester without repairs, becoming permanent blemishes on otherwise thriving neighborhoods.

Arthur Johnson, head of the city’s Building and Safety Department, said he fears that vacant buildings will spread blight to adjacent buildings.

“When there are a few of these buildings, they start to depress values on the block,” he said. “It’s like a cancer. Eventually you have a couple more buildings going down.”

“I’m concerned. We have to find a way to deal with this,” said Councilman Hal Bernson, who heads the council’s Earthquake Recovery Committee.

The level of concern among city officials is so great that last week the City Council instructed Building and Safety officials to develop an inspection program and possibly impose fines to coax landlords of quake-damaged and abandoned buildings into making repairs more quickly.

Meanwhile, requests for funding to pay for repairs and demolition are moving slowly through federal and city bureaucratic channels.

A city request for an additional $40 million in federal funding to continue the city’s earthquake loan program is under consideration by federal housing officials. But even if it is approved, the money will not be available until May at the earliest.

City Housing Director Gary Squier said any delays in repairs will only worsen the condition of blighted buildings and prompt some landlords to give up on fixing them.

“Some people will walk away,” he said. “Eventually, banks will take over and sell the property at a reduced value.”

A request for $2.4 million to demolish vacant buildings that have become public nuisances is making its way through the City Council and is expected to be approved next month.

While the vast majority of the vacant buildings are in the San Fernando Valley, there are 39 vacant, quake-damaged buildings plaguing the Hollywood area and 63 in south and central Los Angeles, according to city records.

The vacant buildings are not concentrated only in low-income communities. They also dot the landscape in upscale hillside neighborhoods.

The owners of such buildings cite drawn-out disputes with insurance companies, contractors and lenders as the main cause for the delays in repairs.

Many others simply could not afford the repair bills and were hesitant to apply for city loans out of fear that they would incur a debt they could not repay.

“I don’t have any money, and I don’t feel I should sell my house or get money that I can’t pay back,” Dorothy Wilson told the city’s Building and Safety Commission before the panel voted last week to declare her garage a public nuisance. Earlier, the panel also declared her adjacent Pacoima home a public nuisance.

Commission President Scott Adler told Wilson that he sympathized but could do nothing but begin the process of demolishing the two structures.

“It’s not fair what is happening to you,” he said. “But we can’t let those buildings stand there forever.”

Since the federally funded demolition program ended, the panel has declared 69 vacant quake-damaged buildings public nuisances. The commission makes such rulings based on a list of criteria that includes the potential for becoming a blight.

In most cases, the city gives property owners up to 90 days to complete repairs and save the structure from being demolished.

With $6.5 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city has razed about 300 buildings that were declared public nuisances and boarded up or fenced 933 others.

But with federal funding running out, city officials say that at least 40 other buildings still must be razed in the next few months. To pay for such demolition, the city plans to bill property owners or place liens on the land if owners cannot or will not pay.

City officials have requested another $2.4 million in federal money to pay for the additional demolition, hoping that the liens and bills to property owners will help recoup the money.

Repairs also may be hampered because the city’s low-interest loan program for quake victims has been nearly exhausted and is on hold pending federal approval of an additional $40 million.

Because of the shortfall, $20 million in loan applications that already have been processed for 1,000 homes and apartments are unfunded and on hold.

“This tested a lot of people, both emotionally and financially,” said Daniel Gomez, a senior building inspector for the city.

An 11-unit condominium complex on Colbath Avenue in Sherman Oaks illustrates how a building can remain unrepaired.

After the quake, condominium owners locked horns with the building’s insurance carrier, which estimated costs of repairs at an amount that condo owners felt was 50% too low.

“I spent almost a year going around and around with the insurance company,” said Emily Freeman, president of the condo’s homeowners association.

But after that dispute was settled and the insurance company agreed to increase its payment, Freeman said, the owners decided not to repair the building and voted instead to sell it to a developer.

“We voted that we didn’t want to go through with it,” she said. “People had gotten on with their lives and wanted to move on.”

But then, Freeman said, each of the owners and their individual lenders had to agree on the selling price before turning over the deed to each condo to the association.

It was a process that has left many participants emotionally drained. Freeman said she will never again invest in a condominium.

“I will never buy another condo because it puts you in business with people you don’t know,” she said.

In many other buildings, owners have simply walked away, leaving properties in disrepair. Because lenders have not foreclosed on such abandoned buildings, city officials say the structures remain in limbo.

Efforts to demolish some abandoned buildings have been hampered because the owner cannot be located and, by law, the city must notify the owner and any other interested party before it can begin the demolition process.

“In some cases we just can’t find anyone to take responsibility,” said Phil Kaaianoa, assistant bureau chief for community safety.

Whatever the reason, the damaged and abandoned buildings are getting on the nerves of neighbors.

Rufus Bowers, owner of a tire repair shop in Pacoima, describes the vermin living in the vacant apartment building across the street from his shop as “rats the size of dogs.”

The apartment building, a two-story stucco structure with gaping cracks along its base, has been fenced to keep out vandals. Weeds, trash and soggy discarded clothes litter the building.

Although the building was declared a public nuisance in January, the owner has made no major repairs except to slap a mismatching coat of powder-blue paint on the exterior and on two nearby trees, according to city building officials.

Squier of the city’s Housing Department, which has administered the earthquake loan program, said he has been confounded by the high number of single-family homes that are still without repairs.

“We have sent notices, some by certified mail, to the owners of the building, saying apply to us for a loan because our funding is running out, and the response has been no applications coming in for single-family homes,” he said.

Squier suspects that many of the homes that were abandoned have been taken over by banks, which then sold the notes on the property to real estate investment trusts.

“The real estate investment trusts are just sitting on the notes until, I don’t know when,” he said.